


Daily Routine

by SnowyWalls



Category: Cirque Des Damnes, Original Work
Genre: Candles, Dark, Ghosts, Gothic, Implied/Referenced Violence, One Shot, Short One Shot, the character isn't even named in the story you don't need to know anything about him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24540637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowyWalls/pseuds/SnowyWalls
Summary: Acel has finished his work for today. Now, it's time to finish up what remains.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Daily Routine

**Author's Note:**

> This was an assignment for a creative writing class that I'm taking right now, and honestly I'm having a lot more fun with it than I thought I would while taking a class like that online. The prompt was for descriptive writing of a scene, and I'm really proud of how this turned out, so that's why I decided to post it here.

Shadows danced, whispering around the grinning man as he took a step back to admire his work on the soiled wooden table that he was all too familiar with. Droplets slowly cascaded down off of the surface, reverberating a soft sound as they hit the puddle beneath them all throughout the small room.

The darkness within was wicked away by only a few well-placed candles, but his eyes had become accustomed to the dark. He was used to the mesmerizing dance of the flames, illuminating only what they deemed necessary and leaving the rest to die out in an inky black, for this dim cell was what he called his home. He couldn’t remember the last time he had ventured outside, not since meeting  _ them _ .

He took a few steps back to admire his work once more, pointed shoes clicking loudly against the dark, wooden floors to finally give that incessant dripping a companion, if only for a second or two. His work was finished, and his work was beautiful. Somehow, his grin grew wider. Crazed and untamed, unkempt teeth on display, it was almost like he expected the thing on the table to find everything just as amusing as him. It didn’t.

His smile only began to fade when he felt the all too familiar feeling of a gaze burning a hole through the back of his neck. He took the candle from the table into his hand, turned, and shone the light in front of him to catch a glimpse of the wandering eyes of the intruder. Sadly, though, there was nothing to be seen. Only the long boarded-up windows covered by shabby, torn curtains, a bed, the mattress torn and untidy, stained with sweat and other unimportant colors, and  the bookshelf he had so dearly loved, yet neglected to organize or even trim down the amount of text overflowing the shelves. This was no big matter, though. He felt the staring often as he finished his work, eyes burning holes through the back of his head only to turn around to see no eyes at all. Some day, though, he was determined to catch his spectral spectator. Maybe, he would even be able to put them onto the table. He had met them once, though only briefly, so he had decided it wouldn’t be impossible to meet them again.

That was a matter for another day, though. He quickly pushed the fantasy out of his mind, smothering the flame of the candles he deemed unnecessary at the moment, which were all but the one currently in his hand. His shoes clicked on the creaky floorboards once again as he made his way to the shelf, crudely made by himself once he found his typical piles on the floor were getting far too large and far too scattered for him to walk around safely. This cell of a home was meant to be his kingdom, his sanctuary, after all. He couldn’t be tripping over books and notes with every step that he took. Below the shelf was an equally as crudely made cabinet, no doubt containing more of the candles he depended on for light in the odd hours of the night, as well as whatever tools he found necessary for his work. 

Carefully, as not to topple the meticulously stacked number of both medical text and fiction that he had accumulated over his years, he took out a single book. The pages inside were worn, some seeming on the verge of falling out of the clearly hand bound tome, an ink pen already sticking out from the middle, where the next available blank page was. He sat on the bed, the loud and unexpected creaking and crumpling of the old thing making him twitch. The ratty blanket crumpled beneath him as he opened to the marker, took it into his hand, and began to document the events of his work and adding to the end that he had, sadly, not caught a glimpse of the spectre. He wrote in loops and swirls, in a language unknown to all but him as his attempt to keep all in his home from the eyes of pesky outsiders.

He turned the page, revealing the next piece of yellowed papyrus, and closed his notebook as it was before, with his pen to guide him the next time he wished to write an entry. For today, though, he had done all he needed. He blew out the candle in his hand and set it gently onto the floor beside his bed. Now enveloped in the darkness of the night, he finally closed his eyes to let his body rest in preparation for the next day.


End file.
